Moral fiber increasingly hanging by a thread

Several recent incidents here in North County have me wondering why so many people have absolutely no concept of right or wrong.

For starters, there was the shooting in Oceanside earlier this week of a man who was rousted from bed by a parked car near his house blasting loud music. What gets me is not so much that an altercation ensued in which the man was struck by the car – instead, it’s the idea that someone would park a car in a quiet residential neighborhood at 1 a.m. and create a ruckus, with no concern at all that the people who live there are most likely in bed at that hour and the loud music would disrupt their sleep.

During an afternoon walk last weekend in Carlsbad, I passed by a house where a raging dog came barking and snarling up against the chain-link fence separating the yard from the sidewalk. I’ve encountered barking dogs before when I walk by, but in most every case the owner is quick to come out and reprimand Fido for pitching a fit. Not so in this case; the three humans reclining in lawn chairs seemed oblivious to their dog’s meltdown, and I felt sorry for the neighbors, who probably have to put up with this all the time.

Lastly, the new “all access” bike lane through Leucadia is a boon for bicyclists, but on several instances I have seen motorists angry at the new arrangement and take their anger out on cyclists – who are only following the new law. They glide by super-close and then cut right in front of them to make right turns – clearly, with an “I’ll show you” attitude.

We’ve become such a narcissistic, “me-first” society that common courtesies have gone right out the door – with a moral fiber that’s barely a thread. And while I’m hardly a religious zealot, I do think a large part of the problem is the secularization of our culture at the hands of the allegedly tolerant and compassionate “progressives.”

We’ve taken God out of our schools and poke fun at religion; we devalue human life by condoning abortion and branding anyone who stands up for the unborn a woman-hating Neanderthal. Two-parent households are considered an anachronism; a woman who stays home with the kids instead of getting a job and relegating child rearing to day care is deemed lazy.

We all but legalize a drug, marijuana, that takes away ambition and drive, and we attack anyone who’s successful and wealthy – regardless of how hard they work, or how many sacrifices they’ve made in live to get where they’re at.

Government has become not an enabler of the private sector but its misguided Robin Hood, at the expense of personal responsibility – and personal values.

So what if my dog barks or my music wakes you up? As long as it doesn’t bother me, it’s A-OK. It’s my life and I’ll do what I want, regardless of how much I trample on yours.